Breaking down the facts: Killers are massively overpowered and the grim numbers aren't even telling
'll just drop the science right away so you get the idea. Killer is obviously overpowered. Overall, survivors only survive 40-43 percent, and killers kill 57-60 percent. Of course this is bad game balance that should be fixed, but the problem is much, much worse than the stats show. Let me explain...
The devs have admitted on numerous occasions that the DC matches are excluded from the kill-rate statistics. This is actually very misleading advertising strategy which artificially inflates survival rates heavily.
Survivors DC on a frequent basis, so this will have a huge impact on survival rates. But why do they DC? Survivors primarily DC because they will most likely lose the match, because the killer is winning, because killer is so overpowered. Most players, including survivors, will finish a match if there is a good chance of winning. This is just human nature.
This is also the same reason most survivors will suicide on hook - they do so when the probability of winning is slim. So most suicides on hook would be legitimate losses for the survivor team regardless, and do not actually inflate kill rate statistics. The amount of suicide-on-hook matches that would end in survivor's favor is very, very small. Since losing 1 survivor creates a snowball effect, most of the matches where that 1 survivor has slim chance of escaping, are also matches where the entire team would have a bad outcome, and the killer would "win" with a 3-4k.
Only a tiny minority of survivor DC's and suicide-on-hooks happen when the survivor/survivors actually has/have a good chance of winning the match. Why? Because most players want to finish games they believe they can win and won't DC or suicide-on-hook.
So what this means is that the game devs are leaving out a massive number of legitimate survivor losses from the statistics, which is actually inflating survival rates dramatically and deflating kill rates immensely. This means kill rates are actually much higher than the public stats above indicate. Of course the devs don't want you to figure this out, because it would spark outrage and protests from the survivor main player base. Of course, I see right through their ploy.
Public stats have kill rates at about 60 against solo Q. But if we adjust for the excluded DC's it is almost certainly closer to a 70-80 percent kill rate. This means killers are massively overpowered. It is already common knowledge at this point that DBD is killer-sided, but it is important to realize that it is far more killer-sided than the devs and killer mains have the courage to admit.
Why won't they admit it? Well, killer mains want to win, so they very naturally welcome balance changes in their favor. They also want to feel good about winning, so they will post hoc rationalize that their win is not because killer role is OP, but because they are just so good at DBD and the survivor mains are just so bad. This is called motivated reasoning, which prevents most killer mains from objectively assessing the actual fairness of the gameplay since it favors their preferred role. This is of course not their fault, it is just human nature.
But the far more interesting question is, why are the game developers hiding the real survival rates, that are far lower than the 40-43 percent above, and closer to a measly 20-30 percent? The answer is very simple: money. Dead by Daylight is first and foremost a business, and the developers have already shown they are willing to implement a pay-to-win model by locking so many essential meta perks behind a pay wall. Of course, for good PR they will give you the opportunity to grind your way to these perks just so they can technically claim it isn't pay-to-win, but they know damn well the average player doesn't have time for this. So the incentive to simply pay up for the competitive advantage in a game with skill-based matchmaking is enormous. You see, it is all part of their carefully crafted marketing scheme orchestrated by top executives.
Now, the game being so heavily killer-sided makes perfect sense. It is the killer mains that make the devs the most money. Why? Because killer DLC is far more appealing and interesting than survivor DLC. If you buy survivor DLC, all you get is a boring cosmetic change and unlock a few unique perks that you either don't care for or can grind for if a perk is really good. But if you buy killer DLC, you get this overpowered bad-ass new monster with unique abilities that make the actual gameplay itself fresh and interesting again, while allowing you to win more without needing much skill at all. This is basically a pay-to-win model, with some very shady and dishonest advertising PR to pretend that it is not.
So how do we fix this problem? Unfortunately it cannot be fixed. As a business, the devs primary motivation will always be money. They have to make a living after all, so they can eat at fancy restaurants, go on fancy vacations, and get intoxicated at fun parties while poor survivors are suffering miserably in solo Q. The killers' primary motivation will always be winning and so the devs will always give killer mains a ridiculously unfair advantage to keep them fat and satisfied and buying more DLC for more easy wins. It's a vicious cycle that goes on endlessly until the game itself is dead. I'd love to end this on a positive note but this is a horror game after all. So this story does not have a happy ending, well, not unless you're a killer main or a DBD dev of course.
Comments
I agree that killers are too strong and that the stats are wrong when they don‘t count dcs, because DCs are still a very big part of the game, but they can go both ways. Either the killer has a easy 4K, he gives survivors the win or the unlikely case that they beat him.
You said most money comes from killers, which makes from a business point no sense to me even when it is probably true, because no one would want to buy survivor stuff when it isn’t fun. I know recent survivors did only get bad perks, which gives me also no reason to buy them obviously. Killers on the other hand have a lot more to offer than survivors, which I agree with you.
The devs don't need to share the win rate, because it's the SAME THING as killrate.
You are correct that you can theoretically define a win as you want, but the devs HAVE defined what a win is, for survivors: escape = win, death = loss. So the survivor win rate is EXACTLY (1 - killrate) and then by symmetry, the killer winrate is EXACTLY the killrate.
You also make the common mistake to think that the winrate formula is (wins / matches) but it's not. The formula is WINS PLUS DRAWS/2, divided by matches.
Using communication methods outside of the game, is not cheating! As per our game rules, we have SWF for a reason and fully expect players to be matching up on Discord etc to play with their friends.
In All fairness, alot of DCes are just from ppl being salty they didn't have a better start of the trial. I recently had a game as Wraith where I had 2 DCes from who I'm assuming was a 2 man SWF within 30 seconds of the match starting. Didn't even get to hook anyone before they dipped out. Should the game really be balanced around THEM or anyone else who DCes as soon as they get found first?
Maybe not, but shouldn't those other players in the match be counted? Does their experience not matter?
Perhaps you're a nice Killer and felt bad for them, maybe you let them get some BP and let them go, I don't know. A lot of other players would take early DC's as a way to an easy victory.
Those matches still happen, they still affect the players within them. I don't think just completely discarding them is the way anymore.
No, matches with less than 5 players should NOT be considered the same as normal matches. Whether I'm nice to the others or not, the kills and escapes don't correctly show how strong anything is.
But the matches happen, do they not? Regardless of whether or not they affect the strength of things, we should be able to see them because they are a part of the DBD experience.
A DC after the Gates are open removes the match from being counted.
A DC while getting mori'd removes the match.
We need to be able to see stats for both.
"I like to player as survivor, because it's fun. But i think that play as killer is better. But i don't like to play as killer, because it's not fun. And i can't have fun with the survivor, because the killer is better. So, the survivor is not fun. But i think is fun. But what lies inside the black hole, anyway?"
This game is Survivor sided and nothing will change my opinion. There are not things that could do it.
Today I played with my friends (not even that experienced players) without any perks & items. We won all 10/10 games. Even against Billy, Huntress or Blight.
Well then, that's just irrational bias.
I wonder whether it‘s true. Maybe if it’s true then you played against bad killers, because your friends are low mmr.
The game is the easiest it‘s ever been for killer and some people still struggle.
I'll agree that having a separate category showing the % of matches with DCes and when those DCes take place can be informative, but still think they should be seperated from normal kill/escape stats.
That's not how this works.
Even if the average kill count would lean closer to draws, the volatility in game progression has consistently made draws the least likely outcome across the board. I think the last time I checked it, there were only three killers for which a 2K was -not- the least likely outcome. And the difference with the second least likely outcome would be less than a percent, IIRC.
A 60% KR is going to be overwhelmingly distributed among 0Ks, 1Ks, 3Ks and 4Ks. Which in turn means that there's just going to be more 3Ks and 4Ks than 0-1Ks.
no role should be a power role it should be a game where both sides have in and out where the game can strive to be a better game for everyone
The devs HAVE defined a win. That's where the whole "a 3K is a win for the killer in the system" came from. I believe it was in their MMR live stream iirc as well as a Q&A soon after.
That's why a win is defined in the wiki as a 3-4K as I posted earlier.
DBD is not sports.
I haven't seen the devs say they consider a draw "half a win" but if there's any clear clarification on that aspect I would like to see it. The vast majority of the community considers a 3K+ a win and a draw "not a win" based on what the devs have stated. If that was incorrect or they misspoke I would expect they would have said something by now.
That's right, OP is BREAKING DOWN THE FACTS:Wildly speculating, doomsaying, and spouting Us vs Them talking points again.
Or put another way, we might have a better game.
Like:
A removal or rework of map offerings.
Problematic perks being identified and addressed sooner.
Over-buffed Killers getting a justified nerf.
A functional MMR system.
A means for Survivors to actually practice looping, just like the custom game mode for Killers.
An apparent lack of curiosity as to why players DC will do the game no good in the long run. Of course, I don't know if this is truly the case at BHVR or if this is just my impression, but it sure feels like there's a lack of interest sometimes.
A dev did say DBD is like Hockey.
The problem is DBD isn't symmetrical so these comparisons always ignore the fact that DBD has unequal sides. A survivor can win by escaping via the exit gate and the killer can win by getting a 3K. On the other hand a killer can lose by getting a 1K and the survivor killed will also lose.
Ultimately trying to balance around a winrate is a complicated mess due to the fact that players can individually win or lose and if the devs want the killers to have an edge or the survivor then balancing around 60% kill rate is perfectly fine.
It's always funny to me how people complain how DBD is too competitive and it should be more casual, but everyone always wants the devs to treat DBD as a competitive game that needs to be completely balanced.
will we ever have in game communication as a option i would love it if ppl want to op out of it if optional so it can satisfies both ppl that don't want to engage with coms and ppl that want to use coms in solo queue
It's not specific to sports. The 0.5x factor HAS to be there otherwise the formula cannot work.
Simple example. Say 4 survivors play 2 matches in a row against the same killer, and to simplify, all players start with the same Elo (say 1000), and say a win is +20.
Question for you: what is the Elo of the players after the following result: 3K, 0K.
Not at all lol by elimination if there are 2 very good loopers (which is common as the loopers back eachother up with flashlight) and 2 doing gens on opposite sides of the map then what I said does make sense... wouldn't make sense to go from one end of the map to the other to chase the other survivor when there is one right in front of me.... When that survivor is eliminated there is only 1 gen worker left because it's almost a certainty that the 2 loopers will continue to try bait the killer.
Sometimes it is wise gameplay to leave the ones on the gens if the intent is to get 3 gens left close to eachother (another perfectly valid tactic) has worked for me many many times. Sacrifice a couple gens to be in a better position to protect the rest
Yeah I understand that but the point of contention here is whether or not a 1K is a quarter win and a 2K is a half win in regards to win rate. As that would mean killer kill rate is equal to win rate. Because that's how it works in sports.
Afaik that's not how it's considered by the vast majority.
You're conflating the amount of elo won or lost with whether or not the result of the match was a win or a loss.
0-1 is a loss. Both are +1 loss.
2K is +0 or +1 draw, so not a win either way.
3-4 are both +1 win.
The amount of elo you gain or lose varies between how large the win or loss was. But that doesn't change whether they were a win or loss themselves. They're two different numbers.
It wouldn't be +20 wins for gaining 20 elo correct? No it's 1 win that got you 20 elo.
In this system at least afaik and considered by most players based on what the devs gave said. Of course the sports formula doesn't work if you're not using the sports definition of the variables.
You'd have to make an argument as to why the vast majority is wrong. "Because sports" isn't a good one when we're not playing a sport.
Depends what you want from the game, if you want such balanced game, then go play some competitive game like Dota, or CS.
DBD is far from that, if you want balanced competitive DBD, then you have to go play custom games with custom rule set. Funny is survivors are usually more limited than killers in competitive DBD. So you wouldn't like even that…
It doesn't make sense for asymmetrical game, where it's 1v4. To reach balance of 50% in reality it's going to be in favor of survivors, because you have to expect 1/2 survivors are going to be bad and when you get 4 actually good survivors most killers are simply without a chance.
What is most balanced we ever had are queue times (game overall too in my opinion). I don't mind playing either side, doesn't matter the BP bonus, queue times are good. That's what matters to me, I don't want to wait 6+ minute on your "balanced" 10 minutes game, that's simply huge waste of my time.
I am all for soloQ QoL features, those are needed in my opinion. But base game buffs for survivors, or nerfs for killers? No
I mean I just dont see how this would ever be possible. As this forum and many endgame chats clearly show, the DBD community is a very emitionally loaded one with both sided being of the opinion that a lot of things especially on their side goes wrong which then in turn leads to many ppl suiciding or dcing cause they are fed up.
People DC maybe because they had a bad match before this one, they dont like the map, they get the same map 4 times in a row, their map offering gets neutralised, the killer runs lethal and finds them instantly, they get teabagged, they get clicked at, they get sandbagged by a teammate, their teammate blocks them with a palette, survivor gets palette saved, they get hooked in the basement, etc. etc.... you could probaly continue this list far longer.
How do you want to separate these people that DC cause of personal preference or cause they personally dont like killer, map, gameplay from those who actually DC because they think they get rolled to hard or the killer/ survivors are too strong? You cant exactly send them a survey on why they dced especially since dcing is oficially not approved by the devs.
If you include data like this it would get things nerfed that are totally fine. For example I still remember the time after wesker came out. Most people agreed that he was fun and balanced but he was so overused that people started complaining in this forum and dcing on mass just cause they didnt want to play against him anymore. Following your logic this would get wesker nerfed even though he was perfectly fine and it was just personal preference that people found the matches boring and dced cause of that.
I
You mean like CoH was over a year, MFT 6 months or something like that? That's not really us vs them. That's a fact. Updates are simply slow..
Killers are not getting nerfs? That's new to me.
We had that, it was terrible. Please no…
Hell yeah and better tutorial. We be really good to have some quick tutorials of how actually each killer power works and what are limits → Vecna/Nemesis/Hag/Skully and how crouching works against them etc., so new survivors have at least some basic knowledge how to play against each killer.
I said nothing except that I think we should be able to see those stats.
Simply removing games that have DC's in them is, not fine, but understandable for balancing purposes. Like you said, it's hard to determine intent, unless it's SM lmao
That being clairified, simply put those stats next to the others when we get a stat dump. "Here's the KR/ER without DC's and here it is with DC's included"
I mean it would be interesting to see but just an unnecessary headache from the pov of the devs I guess.
If we stay with the wesker example who had a high dc rate cause of his overuse, how many threads would pop up in this and other forums pointing out the high dc rate and how many ppl would demand immidiate nerfs even though these numbers arent representative. There are ofc people in the community that know what these numbers mean and what they dont but at least as many that will just use stuff like this for the next big " us vs them" discussion.
So from the point of the devs: why bother with that if not necessary
Because it's a part of the average match.
Also, on that point, why even bother to communicate in the first place? People are just gonna use it as ammunition against them, no matter what they say.
So what you're saying only makes sense if two of the survivors don't play the game as intended and nobody unhooks the one survivor you just hooked? Is that what you're saying?
I'm unsure what exactly you're trying to argue. My position is that tunnelling should be eliminated and that would reduce the intensity of the issues the survivor role faces. What exactly are you attempting to argue?
Fixing DC is easy anyway, make the penalty different, like first 3 DCs results in one hour ban, then incrementing it up afterwards
At least not 5 minutes, I guess
Some people still struggle? If it's easier to play Killer than years ago, does it mean game is Killer-Sided? You guys completely miss the right spots to talk about it… It's weird.
Posts like this really show who are heavily biased towards one side and don't understand other side at all.
not really its a twisted god that's siphoning ppl's emotion as a source of food the more emotions he gets out of ppl the better the more hopeless some one gets the less he get out of it thematic wise there should be no power role if ether roles gets too much powers in actuality the less the entity gets out of it and the best way to get that is if both sides don't know if they get to kill of survive if too much ppl died he would get nothing out of it because ppl would lose hope and there would be no point
cook
The game is objectively killer sided. Killers have a 20% higher win rate than survivors. There is no way you can say without bias it is survivor sided.
Is there any reason that we should NOT use that formula other than it makes your argument worse?
The only reason it says it's a sports term is for most of human history sports were the only thing you could reasonably track winrate for, so it was a formula invented for that. Why shouldn't we use it?
You say BHVR haven't said a draw is considered half a win, but possibly the most infamous thing BHVR have said was to compare DBD to hockey. Surely if we're going by what BHVR have said, we would then reasonably be able to use the sports formula for the thing they said is like a sport.
Not that any of that matters. Even if we look at nightlight stats, any way of looking at the numbers puts killers on top
(Taken from nightlight, 12 July 2024)
Killers win 55.5% of their games, lose 32.2%, and tie the remaining 12.4%, while maintaining a 60.4% kill rate. By any metric, the killer win rate eclipses the survivor win rate.
Using the commonly accepted method, killer winrate is (12.3/2) + 55.5% = 61.65%.
If you want to ignore draws, that still means the killer has a 55.5% win rate compared to the survivor team's 32.2%
Even if you want to include survivor team draws as losses for the killer AND wins for the survivor (for some reason) that STILL puts the killer winrare above the survivor "non-loss" rate
Also, if you compare the survivor individual win (escape) rate of 39.6% to the killer win rate, there's a gulf of difference there. (However, that winrate also includes hatch escapes in 3ks, which individually count as a draw, so that's still actually a survivor "non-loss" rate instead of a winrate proper.)
Also, Nightlight is usually not 100% accurate, but whenever official stats drop they've always been slightly more killer sided so if there are any complaints about these numbers the reality is probably even more killer sided.
So yeah that's basically it. There's no good reason not to use that formula, but even if you don't use it any reasonable metric you could choose to use paints a similar picture.
Infamous for a reason, because the game isn't like hockey. The problem the community had with that at the time was DBD is nothing like hockey or a sport so the comparison didn't make sense. Additionally they have said more about the MMR system than just 1 infamously bad thing 1 dev said 1 time. Leading to the majority consensus of wins and the game not being like sports, everything put together.
Idk exactly what picture you're trying to paint with that lower part but I didn't say that killers win as much as survivors or that it's 50% if that's what you're getting at.
This time with a tin foil hat on top of it.
Please stop fueling tribalism in the forum. We are currently on a good way to get rid of it.
Just because someone has a certain opinion, does NOT mean, that you can just put them on one side of a spectrum. As already said by the person before, your assumption might not even be correct. Thx.
"I (killer) win alot because survivors are just bad at the game" is definitely something I see alot of, you're right about that. There are alot of folk who ignore that the game is literally designed to give them an advantage.
Ultimately, how strong a killer is impacts my enjoyment of the game very little. For example, I die most of the time to decent Nurses or Blights, but I still don't mind going against either one. I actually really enjoy those games.
What they should be overhauling is matchmaking and seeing if that makes the game feel better in general for survivor. I suspect though that matchmaking is entwined with kill and escape rates - ie there's a mix of skill levels in solo games specifically as a means of maintaining the kill rate. Especially as they're currently doing killer reworks with a goal of making them easier to use. This could push some MMRs high quite fast and leave them unable to compete if solo teams were all the same skill level, so having some lower skill survivors in there helps. But it makes the survivor experience miserable at times.
I mean, sure, fair enough. Glad we're in agreement that the game favors killers.
Kind of curious why you're able to correctly parse that DBD is not like Hockey, Specifically, due to the mechanics of hockey being entirely unlike those of DBD, but you're unwilling to see the ways in which DBD is like sports in the general sense: they're both competitions in which individuals or teams engage in direct competition against each other, attempting to use strategies to advance their own objectives while hampering the opponent's objective. Obviously you're not arguing against the fact the game is killer-slanted, so why the selective application of your reading comprehension and critical analysis skills?
At this point I don't believe this is going to get anywhere without a more concrete and direct answer from the devs themselves even more so than the information already given out. Considering DBD as a sport and using sports logic will leave you very much in the minority. When players are talking about "win rate" they generally won't be using the sports version as it makes more sense given the game and the information given that it's not that. So if you want to continue to do so to your own conversational detriment go ahead I guess.
It didn't make sense then and it doesn't make sense now. Unless you're saying DBD is actually like hockey. Which virtually everyone disagrees with.
The majority understood what the devs said differently and afaik the devs haven't corrected or clarified anything on that front as would be expected due to how many people would be incorrect. I will continue to use the majority version as I still have not been given any good reason not to compared to what says I should.
There's more than just 1 infamously bad line 1 dev said 1 time.
You can say 60% killrate is not 60% win rate. I agree, because it can reach to 80% win rate with 60% kill.
In the end, survivors' average win rate is 40%. Four-ty. To make killers to have win rate that low, they never lose.
Green for escape, Red for death.
I understand how you can think killers are op, if you have a 80% death rate. Do you know who has an eascape rate that low? Beginners. For Beginners the Killer always is overpowert and not becoming better at the game doesnt make you better. So stop complaining and start work on yourself to get better. I play both sides like 40 Survivor /60 Killer Its true, that I have indeed an higher kill rate than 60% Im at 76,61% at the moment, but guess what my escape rate is also on 61,96%. Now comes the funny part as killer I use the meta perks with good addons, but nothing higer than green. As survivor I use perks that give me somthing but are far from Meta. (Aftercare, Any Means, Leader and Alert) and no Items. If I would play the strongest every game I think I would deffenitly reach mutch higher escape/kill rates. If you invest more time you will get better.
Also most of the survivors, that dc and give up dont do it, because they dont think they can beat the killer most of them are just salty kids, that cant think about there own mistakes that they made.
"I played with my friends".
Clearly soloq is overpowered by this proxy.
"I play both sides like 40 Survivor /60 Killer Its true, that I have indeed an higher kill rate than 60% Im at 76,61% at the moment"
Anyone who thinks a 76% kill rate (which is common for killer mains) is fine should be never be in charge of balance in any game.
I had over ~72% kill rate as Myer, no slowdown, first kill at 9th hook.
Should Myers get nerfed?
Guys do you really think every Survivor team or soloq that plays Public Games will play serious every game? Your stats don't matter at all. You can play 10 games against a Survivors that want to win and you will lose many of them.